How is it that a billionaire businessman with little political experience (or hair for that matter) is leading the herd of GOP presidential nominees? Many people are asking that very question now that a new poll shows Donald Trump still has a higher favorability rate among registered Republican voters (18%) than Jeb Bush (15%) and Scott Walker (10%). These numbers come from the most recent political poll, and the first one after Trump’s remarks about John McCain. (For a quick recap, Donald Trump basically said McCain isn’t a true war hero because he was captured by the Vietnamese.) Many political analysts thought this, coupled with Trump’s bashing of other presidential candidates and his insistence that many illegal immigrants are rapists and murders, would sink his presidential campaign. They were dead wrong.
If anything, Trump has grown in popularity with each new headline story about him. This actually makes plenty of sense, as candidates who are popular now usually are so from the media attention received as a result of their antics (Do you remember Herman Cain from the last election?) Trump’s ridiculous ideas make a great news story, and for some voters this is exactly what they want to hear. But for most of those being polled, it is just name recognition.
Trump’s battle plan is basically to sway voters with emotional filled rants. He knows people are frustrated with today’s politicians, and he understands there are problems with immigration. Instead of taking a boring political approach, he just shouts insults that have little factual evidence, hoping that he makes the front page of the paper. Presenting factual evidence this early in the race among a field of seemingly hundreds of GOP presidential hopefuls will get you nowhere. You have to be bold to get attention this early, and Trump is doing exactly that.
Poll Numbers Courtesy of: http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/07/26/trump-still-tops-cnn-poll-leads-bush-by-three-points/
Photo Courtesy of: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/03385/donald-trump-plane_3385886b.jpg
Nicholas Ciatto says
I agree with your questioning of how Donald Trump is winning the GOP nomintation when he is making all of these rediculous statements. It will be interesting to see how far he can make it in the campaign, and will be very interesting to see how he leads the country if he wins. Good post
cam6505 says
I really liked this post and your use of humor throughout. You also were able to relate it back to Trump’s rhetorical strategy of winning through emotion and it was all around a well written article.
Megan Conrad says
This is really well-written! Make sure you mention the article you read and analyze it rhetorically.
cqm5609 says
Loved this post. Seemed to have a bit of sarcasm in it from the title to the way you wrote it. I also liked how you gave recaps of the comments trump made to help the reader understand your point.